1855–1899 · France · Romantic
Ernest Chausson (1855–1899) was a French composer who studied with Jules Massenet and was close to the circle of César Franck. He did not write a great deal, and about two thirds of his output is songs; his most performed work is the Poème for violin and orchestra. The site offers his songs for voice and piano.
Ernest Chausson was born in Paris on 20 January 1855 into a wealthy middle-class family. His father had made his fortune shortly before his son was born, winning state contracts in the eighteen-fifties while the centre of the capital was being rebuilt under Haussmann's plan. The father wanted a dependable profession for his son, so Chausson enrolled at the law faculty of the University of Paris. He studied diligently, but neither the lectures nor the prospect of a legal career appealed to him.
He regarded literature and music as his real occupation, and indeed a life lived among the arts. His first compositions were written under the influence of his infatuation with a close friend, Madame de Ressac, a music lover and singer. The operas of Richard Wagner made an enormous impression on him, above all The Flying Dutchman and Tristan and Isolde, and he kept his admiration for them to the end of his life. In 1877 Chausson received his law diploma and for two years was listed as a barrister at the court of appeal, though he barely noticed the job.
In these years Chausson went more and more often to the opera houses and to aristocratic and literary salons, meeting many well-known people. The most important encounter came in 1878, when he met Vincent d’Indy, a young composer and conductor and one of the most active pupils in the circle of César Franck. That meeting did more than any other to shape the rest of Chausson’s life and his final choice of the composer’s profession.
He wrote his dissertation, took a doctorate in law and then gave up the legal profession. In 1879 Chausson entered the Paris Conservatoire, in the composition class of Jules Massenet. Later, on d’Indy’s advice, he also began to study with César Franck. By then his output was small: about ten piano pieces and songs.
Young musicians gathered around Franck, among them Henri Duparc, Guy Ropartz and Gabriel Pierné. At the time their circle actively opposed the conservatoire establishment and was in effect the only organised opposition to the conservative Academy. Chausson became an active member, yet he did not set himself against the musical establishment: a wealthy man of independent views, he served rather as a link between the rival camps.
After leaving the conservatoire Chausson travelled widely in Europe. In 1882 he went to Bayreuth for the first time, with d’Indy, for the premiere of Wagner’s Parsifal. In the same year he wrote the symphonic poem Viviane, which he revised five years later; the main features of his manner are already clear in it. His style took shape under the influence of Wagner, Franck and d’Indy: late Romanticism with a richer harmony and a distinctly French lyricism.
In early 1883 Chausson married Jeanne Escudier for love. Her sister Madeleine was the wife of Henri Lerolle, head of the largest French music publishing house, so Chausson became a close relative of the publisher. On his second trip to Bayreuth, in 1883, he went to hear Wagner with his young wife.
He travelled often and with relish: in fifteen years he covered almost all of Europe, from Bohemia to Spain. He was especially fond of the small Italian town of Fiesole, where he rested and composed a great deal. He also went often to Brussels, where his music was received more warmly than in his native Paris, and many premieres of his larger works took place there.
Wealth, an easy temperament, connections in high society and a happy marriage secured Chausson’s position in the musical and artistic life of France. Almost all his works were published at once by the largest music publisher in Paris. From 1886 until his death in 1899 he served, together with d’Indy, as secretary and later general secretary of the National Society of Music. He used his position to help his friends from Franck’s circle obtain posts and appointments. A committed Wagnerian, he stood against the most stubborn conservatives of the Academy and supported the new currents.
His salon brought together every week the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe, the singer Pauline Viardot, the composers Isaac Albéniz, Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré and Henri Duparc, the pianist Alfred Cortot-Denis, the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, the writer Ivan Turgenev and the painter Claude Monet. Chausson also built up a collection of paintings, mainly by the French Impressionists. With his help d’Indy and Charles Bordes set up the Schola Cantorum, and Guy Ropartz became director of the conservatoire in Nancy.
It was in these years that Chausson wrote his most vivid and important works. His three-movement Symphony in B-flat major, Op. 20 (1890), is still known, and above all the Poème for violin and orchestra (1896), which is performed regularly and is part of the repertoire of the world’s leading violinists.
In the early 1890s Chausson grew close to two young musicians who would shape the face of French music for the next quarter of a century: Claude Debussy and Erik Satie. For Debussy he became an older friend and in part a mentor. Debussy had just broken with the musical academy and was almost isolated, and he counted on Chausson’s personal support and connections. Chausson helped with many of Debussy’s publishing and concert projects and himself fell under the influence of his first Impressionist works. He particularly admired the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, which he had heard while it was still in sketches, played on the piano by Debussy himself.
Traces of Impressionism can be seen in all of Chausson’s late works: in the Poème for violin and orchestra, in the symphonic poem Soir de fête, in the Chanson perpétuelle for soprano and orchestra, and in many piano and vocal pieces of the 1890s. The writing in them grows more colourful and at times quite transparent. The friendship, however, never quite came to full flower: when Debussy took up a sharply anti-Wagnerian position, relations between them cooled somewhat.
Chausson’s part in the fate of Erik Satie is a chapter of its own. Holding the post of general secretary, he personally signed off for performance two of Satie’s Gymnopédies in Debussy’s orchestration; they were played on 20 February 1897 in the Salle Érard at a concert of the National Society of Music. It was the first time Satie’s music had been played by a large symphony orchestra, and it remained the only time for the next twenty years. Satie himself went on remembering Chausson with unfailing gratitude long afterwards.
Friends, acquaintances and envious rivals often called Chausson lucky: fortune favoured him in almost everything, and he was of a happy disposition. On 10 June 1899, at the height of his creative powers, he was killed. At his estate in Limay, in the department of Seine-et-Oise, he was out on his bicycle, picked up too much speed on a downhill stretch, lost control and struck a brick wall, and the composer died on the spot. He was 44. He is buried in the family vault in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
Chausson’s list of works is not large: 39 opus numbers of published works and about as many unpublished ones, mostly small and chamber forms. About two thirds of them are songs for voice with piano, with various ensembles and with orchestra, so by nature Chausson is a vocal composer. The art of prosody mattered especially to him: he aimed to unite voice, poetic text and instrumental accompaniment completely, and achieved this in a natural and charming way.
Chausson’s work is conventionally divided into three periods. Until 1886 his music is very French, light, with supple melodies in the manner of Massenet. For about eight years after 1886 the influence of Wagner and Franck predominates: the music becomes more dramatic and tense, and the harmony sharper and denser. From 1893, a time of close contact with Debussy, features of Impressionism enter it, the texture becomes more transparent and the harmony more refined. When his father passed away in 1894, Chausson came closer to the poetry of the French Symbolists and to Russian literature, above all Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.
His large works include the Poème for violin and orchestra, Op. 25 (1896), his only completed symphony, in B-flat major, Op. 20 (1889–1890), and the Poème de l’amour et de la mer for voice and orchestra, Op. 19. He built his only opera, Le roi Arthus, on the Wagnerian system of leitmotifs. Among the chamber works the Piano Quartet in A major, Op. 30 (1897), stands out. He wrote little for the piano: Paysage, Op. 38 (1895), dances, Op. 26 (1896), a march (1884) and sonatinas for four hands (1878).
Chausson was a completer rather than an innovator: he drew a line under late Romanticism and refined to a fine polish what he had learned from his predecessors. Extremes and emotional outbursts were foreign to him; he preferred deep lyricism, refined expression and a polished form. His music sits between the dramatic Romanticism of Wagner and Franck and the airy Impressionism of Debussy. To the end of his life he stayed loyal to the ideals of Bayreuth.
Chausson also wrote sacred music, mostly for choir. For the Franck school this was an ordinary task, but Chausson often went further than his teacher: to the customary organ he added the harp, the piano and the violin, and a more colourful harmony. Such works include “O salutaris” (1879), two motets, Op. 6 (1883), and “Tantum ergo” (1891). Among the songs for voice and piano are “Les Albatros” to words by Baudelaire (1879), “La Caravane” to a poem by Gautier, Op. 14 (1887), and the cycle “Serres chaudes” to poems by Maeterlinck, Op. 24.
For players the site has Chausson’s songs for voice and piano, which make up the largest part of his legacy. “Hébé” is marked at the intermediate level, while “Nanny”, “Le Charme” and “Le Colibri” are marked advanced, so it is best to begin with “Hébé”.